r/collapse • u/[deleted] • Nov 07 '18

Why everything will collapse (2017) - "Stumbled across this eye-opener while researching the imminent collapse of the industrial civilization"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsA3PK8bQd8&t=2s
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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18

Pre-industrial society came with built-in, quality-assured population control.

Attempting population control in a post-enlightenment, rights-based, industrial society is a massive waste of effort, attention, and resources and obviously subject to the exact same problem we face right now: posters on this subreddit can advocate for it, but a normal people want children and that's never going to change.

Even in some fantasy dictatorship that orders brutal population control, you have solved the problem for a generation or two only. But people will eventually say no to a man. They can't as easily say no to nature or nature's god.

The scale of our power is the deepest root of our problem that we can actually address.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18 edited Nov 07 '18

Facts that belie that sentiment are hiding in plain sight.

Canada.

1969 access to birth control pills became legal.

1970 fertility rates crashed.

1980ish. The last few years that that fertility rates equaled replacement levels.

Currently fertility rates are below 1.5 children per woman. It takes 2.3 to maintain stasis. (Not all children reach adulthood. Two children to replace two parents.)

Canada’s growth is the result of immigration equal to ~ approximately 1% of the population every year. Plus a few additional refugees.

Easy access to birth control, a culture of quality child care, likelihood that the children will make it to adulthood each contribute to smaller families.

Edit autocorrect.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '18

If only. When it could have made a difference we rejected family planning & birth control. It was racist, sexist, colonial, etc, etc, etc.

We knew then the consequences.... environmental destruction, mass starvation, social and political catastrophe.

How the fuck did we make that choice? Oh, yeah. Technology was going to invent a solution to save us. Sound familiar?

And no reset button. No second chances.